


Like the past never happened

by stolemyslumber



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-24
Updated: 2012-06-24
Packaged: 2017-11-08 10:04:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/442020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stolemyslumber/pseuds/stolemyslumber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything ends. They keep going.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like the past never happened

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Boys of Summer fic exchange on [We Pimpin'](http://community.livejournal.com/we_pimpin/). Originally posted [here](http://pimpin-exchange.livejournal.com/3305.html).
> 
> Thanks to Molly for beta-reading!

*

There are eight of them. Eight of them who survived whatever the fuck this is. Poke calls it the apocalypse. He says God finally got tired of all of them being retards and decided to start over. Pappy thinks it’s some kind of plague. Person says it doesn’t matter what it was, because they can’t do anything about it, and they need to shut the fuck up and focus on what’s happening now. He uses more words than that, but not as many as Tim expects. It might be the smartest thing Tim’s ever heard him say.

Half the city and most of the people in it are gone. He thinks that’s going to be the worst part, in the beginning. The confusion, the destruction. The knowledge that it must be like this everywhere, every place their family and friends might be. He thinks it can’t get worse, and then the bodies start to rot. Their base camp is just outside Oceanside -- they’d all shown up to what’s left of it, one by one, like it’s the only place they thought of to go -- and they walk around with handkerchiefs and scarves over their faces. Poke’s wife rubs lip balm under their noses, but the smell of mint isn’t enough.

There was looting, in the beginning, but it died down when everything else did. Soon after the smell starts, they start to hear noises in the city again. Tim had known they weren’t the only ones. There had been others at Oceanside when he got there, and more unfamiliar faces had shown up than familiar over that first week. But no one stayed who wasn’t from Bravo-2.

It’s just noise at first. After weeks of hearing nothing but each other, it’s enough to unnerve all of them. It starts up as the sun starts setting that first night. Poke takes his family inside and puts his girls to bed early. By the end of the week, he and Gina are covering their daughters’ ears so they can’t hear the screams echoing across the city.

Tim doesn’t know what the fuck these people think they’re doing. Most of the city is dead, and these people want to go adding to that number. He’s halfway to the door, weapon in hand, but he stops himself before Pappy can. The way the sounds echo off the rubble, there’s no way to know where it’s coming from.

 

*

 

The sounds get worse. They go to 50% watch, but Tim barely sleeps even when he’s able to. He sits up most nights, looking out through a crack between the boards they’ve nailed over the windows. They’re all exhausted, and their supplies are dwindling. They’ve picked through everything within a few miles’ radius, and going farther seems risky, even in daylight. They’re going to have to make a decision soon.

One night he looks across the room and Person’s looking back at him. Tim gives him a nod, and Person being Person, he takes it as an invitation to speak.

All he says is, “They’re getting closer.” He’s not wrong. They’re still halfway across the city, but this area was hit harder than others. There isn’t much here for them that hasn’t already been destroyed. If they get bored, turning over rocks and not finding victims underneath, they could be close sooner than any of them expect.

“They are,” Tim says, turning back to the window. He hears Person turn over, and then it’s quiet again.

 

*

 

They’re running low enough on fresh water that they decide to try a spot four or so miles away, where Chaffin says there’s a string of grocery stores and gas stations. Person volunteers to go, and Tim goes with him.

Picking their way through the destruction takes time. Person is weirdly quiet, even more so than he’s been since he showed up at Oceanside on Day 2. Tim had had better things to worry about in Iraq than Person’s state of mind, but he mostly remembers his non-stop chatter -- his lack of filter, really, and his constant need to be talking long after everyone else wanted to stop listening -- and his and Colbert’s weird sort of driver-sergeant co-dependency. Now, his rambling bullshit monologues and pop songs are gone. Tim prefers the quiet, but he’s not sure what to make of Ray Person walking four miles without saying more than five words.

They hit the intersection Chaffin named, and there’s nothing there but burned-out husks of buildings. Bodies, too, but Tim’s re-learning how to tune those out. They’ve been picked away to little more than skeletons by birds and strays.

There are two buildings still standing at the end of the street. They make their way toward them, skirting the bodies as best they can.

“Where should we go?” Person asks abruptly. Tim turns to him, about to ask what the fuck he’s talking about, and then an engine roars to life. It’s _close_. Maybe a block away. It sounds like a truck, and the sound starts getting louder.

Tim moves to take cover behind a car, but Person grabs his arm and pulls him off the street, into a narrow gap between an upended dumpster and the crumbling wall of the building next to it. The dumpster’s full of bricks and broken glass, but it’s propped up on some debris, and there’s a gap underneath it. The space is barely big enough for the two of them to squeeze into.

It’s long but low and narrow, almost enough space for them to both lay on their stomachs. Even with Person pressed as far under the dumpster as he can get, Tim has to throw a leg and arm over him, sniper-style, in order to fit.

Outside, the truck has stopped halfway down the block. It’s still running, and Tim can hear people shouting and laughing. Then a dog barks. It’s a cautious, hopeful sound, not threatening at all. Gunshots ring out, and the dog yelps. Someone whoops, like it’s a show.

He’s close enough to Person that he can feel it the second he stiffens. Tim thinks it’s the dog getting shot, at first, and then Person starts to move, pushing Tim out of the gap by a few inches.

“What the fuck,” Tim hisses. The engine roars to life again, and the truck starts moving.

Person shakes his head, but he stops moving and lets Tim push them back into the gap. He leans over Person a little, trying to brace himself so he’s not putting as much weight on him, and he sees the body. She might have been sixteen or so, although it’s hard to tell. The animals haven’t found her back here, and Tim’s startled inhale gets him a whiff of what Person must be smelling.

The truck is coming down the street they were just on, crashing through rubble. It stops again, though, and he can hear people rifling through cars and moving things. Tim curses under his breath, trying to shift them both away from the body without exposing them. It’s no use. It’s either stay where they are or risk being seen.

There’s enough room for Person to turn his head, and Tim turns just far enough that Person can press his face into Tim’s shoulder. On the street, the truck is inching along slowly. There’s a gap between the bottom edge of the dumpster and the ground; Tim can’t see the truck, but he sees the cars it’s pushing out of the way. He tightens his arm around Person’s shoulders, leaning in over him and farther into the space under the dumpster.

He doesn’t think either of them breathes until the truck has passed them. When it reaches the end of the block, the tires squeal and it roars off to the left, then back up the next street, behind them. It keeps going in that direction, and Tim hopes it’s headed back to a base camp.

When the sound finally fades, they crawl out into the sun, wiping dirt off their clothes. Person looks pale and faintly green, but when Tim looks at him, he just nods, ready.

They’ve lost a lot of time. The sun ticks down in the sky, and they head down the street, breaking into a jog on the open path the truck cut through the destruction.

The first of the two intact buildings is a home and garden store with all its windows smashed in. Someone boarded them up at some point, and then someone broke through the boards, too. It’s dark inside. Tim glances around the parking lot, and when he looks over at Person, he’s doing the same.

“The other one first?” Person asks, shrugging a shoulder. They need food and water more than anything else right now, so they walk to the next building. It’s a little mom-and-pop grocery store that must have looked tiny and run down next to the Ralph’s and Wal-Mart down the street. It’s still standing, though, looking untouched except for the doors, which are laying in pieces on the sidewalk.

The windows are intact, lining both sides of the building. It’s dusty and bright when they walk inside, hugging opposite walls.

They do a sweep of the building, neither of them as thorough as they could be. The sun’s starting to drop, and getting back before sunset takes precedence. They meet back at the front, and Person pulls two carts out of the still-neat rows by the doors.

“There’s water,” he says, squinting into the light filtering in from behind Tim. “This place is barely touched.”

“It’s a fucking goldmine,” Tim says, and Person lets out a startled laugh, cutting it off a moment later. “Start at that end. Let’s make this quick.”

“How much should we take?” Person asks, kicking the loosely spinning wheel of his cart. Tim gets it; they’re not the only ones out here, and there must be others who aren’t fucking shit up like the monster truck rally assholes they almost ran into. Tim’s crew doesn’t need the whole store.

He thinks of Person asking where they should go, and he’s not sure why he didn’t get it before. “Enough for a road trip, you think?”

Person gives a slow nod. “Get the girls some fresh air, yeah.”

 

*

 

The sun’s starting to dip low by the time they push their overloaded carts out onto the street. Tim’s trying to quiet an inner rush of panic, knowing they won’t get back before sunset, when Person darts off behind an SUV. Tim sees the blood a second later, a dotting trail that’s not quite dry and leads off behind that same SUV.

When Tim rounds it, Person’s crouched down, holding out a hand to a scrawny mutt of a dog. It cowers when Tim approaches, pulling its leg in close to its chest.

“It’s okay, buddy,” Person says, his voice full of the fake cheer and bravado Tim hasn’t heard since Iraq. “C’mon, it’s okay.”

The dog leans forward, sniffing at Person’s fingers. He and Tim both stay very still. The idea of another mouth to feed -- but no, it doesn’t matter. They’re not going to leave it here.

Person coaxes the dog out until he can gently ruffle its ears and hook his fingers through its collar. “Mambo,” he reads off the bone-shaped tag. The dog’s tail wags. “Hey, Mambo. We gotta go.”

The dog stands up, injured paw hovering off the ground. It’s small enough that Person can lift it up and drape it over his shoulders, paws hanging down on either side of his chest.

“That’s it, good girl,” Person soothes, waiting for the dog to settle before he stands up.

By the time they get back to base, there’s only a hint of light left on the horizon. The dog’s managed to fall asleep, and Tim feels ready to do the same. They had no other contact on the way back, but the sounds of destruction started in the distance right after the sun hit the horizon.

Poke’s waiting at the door, gun in hand. He and Chaffin help pull the carts in and blockade the door behind them.

“A dog, man?” Poke asks, watching Person lower Mambo onto an open patch of floor, careful not to bump her injured leg.

“Mambo,” Tim corrects without thinking. He picks a pack of water bottles up out of the bottom of the cart and passes them to Poke. “They were shooting at her.”

“ _They_?” Pappy interrupts, coming up on the other side of the cart. “You ran into them?”

“We came close,” Tim says, digging for the bandages and medical tape he knows are in the cart somewhere. “We took cover while they passed.” He looks across the room to where Person’s started cleaning Mambo’s leg with a damp piece of cloth. The dog whines but doesn’t try to get away. “They’ve got a base somewhere, but they were rolling in broad daylight, fucking shit up.”

“Shit,” Pappy says. “We got a game plan?”

Tim finally unearths the first aid supplies. “For them? Not yet. But I think we need to get out of the city.”

 

*

 

They hear the truck again during the next few days, and every day it comes closer, earlier. On day three, they listen as it comes down their street, stopping a block or two away and heading back the way it came.

They find their own truck, a pickup with an extended cab and the keys still in the ignition. It’s barely big enough for the eight of them and their supplies to squeeze into, but it’s the best they can find.

The fourth day dawns bright and clear. They load the supplies into the pickup and wait until afternoon, when Poke and Gina drive the girls over to a parking garage two blocks away. Chaffin follows on foot to wait inside the entrance, armed and ready.

It’s late afternoon when they hear the truck roaring closer. They left a lamp lit in the doctor’s office, and both the grocery carts are sitting outside. It’s a prime target; now they just have to see if they take the bait. Person shifts next to him as the truck approaches, bringing his gun up. Across the street, Pappy’s on the roof of the opposite building.

There are three in the front -- driver, passenger, and a third leaning out the passenger side window. The others are in the covered bed of the truck, and Tim counts them as they spill out onto the street, whooping and shouting and waving their guns in the air like the incompetent assholes they are. Seven of them. Ten in all. They can manage ten.

It’s an easy plan: wait for them to enter the building, realize there’s nothing inside, and come back out. Then the three of them will open fire. They’re all waiting, sights trained on the office door and the cab of the truck. Two blocks away, in the parking garage, Mambo starts barking.

Person hisses through his teeth and rocks forward, leaning farther over the lip of the roof. Tim puts a hand on his shoulder, urging him back, but Person shakes his head. The driver is getting out of the truck, holding a gun and a length of rope. Tim can see the glee on his face from four stories up.

“You got a shot?” Person says into the little two-way radio they’d found at the grocery store, lining up his own shot at the same time.

“Negative,” Pappy responds. “He’s too close to the building. Over.”

“You have him?” Tim asks. The driver’s heading northeast, toward a gap between two buildings that will lead him straight to the garage. He’s below Pappy, at too much of an angle for him to get a good shot.

“I’ve got him,” Person says, to both Tim and Pappy. “You got the door?”

It’s obvious Tim doesn’t, and he bites off a curse, pulling his hand off Person’s shoulder and aiming again at the open door of the doctor’s office.

“You good?” Person asks, tracking the driver as he walks. When Tim says yes, he lets out a piercing whistle, clearly a human sound, and it’s enough to make the driver stop in his tracks. Person takes a shot. From the corner of his eye, Tim sees the driver jerk sideways.

The seven come spilling out of the house all at once, shouting and confused. Person fires again, and the driver falls. Tim counts to ten in his head, waiting. They swarm around the truck, looking for a shooter. None of them look up.

“Assholes in a barrel,” Person mutters, and Tim almost laughs out loud.

The rest of it is over in minutes. The group on the ground barely have the sense to take cover, so used to owning the streets, and Tim’s not sure any of them ever realize where the shots are coming from.

The three of them meet by the truck, checking the bodies for signs of life and collecting their weapons. When they’re finished, Pappy heads to the garage to update the others. Tim starts sorting through the guns and knives. Most of it’s older and run down, but a couple guns are in decent shape, and he fills the pockets of his jacket with ammo. The knives are a no go, crusted with blood and things Tim doesn’t want to look at closely enough to identify.

“Check the truck for supplies,” he tells Person. It comes out as more of an order than he intends it to be, but Person heads for the back of the truck without pause.

“Do we want to take --” he starts as he rounds the back. Tim looks up. He’s staring into the truck bed, and the look on his face is enough to get Tim up and moving. “Hold off a minute, Pappy. We need to clean up,” Person says into the radio.

The inside of the truck is shadowed, and it takes Tim a second to realize he’s seeing blood. The whole bed is covered in it. Floor, walls, ceiling all a mess of dried blood. There are two ropes running lengthwise toward the front of the truck, the only handholds that look halfway clean. The mess gets thicker toward the front, and Tim can tell it’s not just blood.

“Sick motherfuckers,” Tim grits out through his teeth. He starts away from the truck, but Person doesn’t follow. “Hey. C’mon, let’s take care of the bodies and get out of here.”

“I think that’s gas,” Person says. He rubs a hand over his face. “A couple cans of it.”

There’s a lumpy shape covered in a blanket in the back of the truck bed, and a slice of red plastic peeks out where the blanket’s moved. Tim wants to argue, but he can’t. All they have is the half-tank their pickup already had. It might be enough to get them out of the city, but who knows when they’ll find more.

He gives Person a boost into the truck. He lands on both feet and hooks his fingers around the rope, but the floor is slick enough that he loses his grip and almost falls right back out of the truck. Tim steps behind him, catching him around the waist with one arm. He gets a hand between them and pushes Person back up, realizing belatedly that he’s got a handful of Person’s ass. It gets him back on his feet, though, one hand back on the rope and the other on Tim’s shoulder, steadying himself.

“You good?” Tim asks. Person nods, looking like he’s trying not to breathe in too deep. He lets go of Tim and makes his way slowly to the back of the truck. Tim can hear the squelch of his boots and has to swallow down the bile rising in the back of his throat.

Person flips up the blanket in the back, revealing a line of gas cans and water jugs held in by a bungee cord. He has to bring them out one at a time, off-balance and careful. There are four cans, three of them full, and three half-full jugs of water. Person goes back after the last one, reaching down into the corner of the truck. The rope won’t stretch far enough, so he lets go, going down to his knees on the blanket.

“Watch your --” Tim starts, clearing his throat. “Your shoes.” They’re covered in blood, and it must be soaking through the fabric. Person kneels up instead of sitting on his heels and turns, tossing Tim a box of ammo.

Eighteen gallons of gas, ten gallons of water, four hundred rounds. There would be more at the assholes’ base camp, but they won’t have time to get there. The sun’s dipping low enough for light to filter in to the truck. Person stands up and moves the blanket with one foot, looking for any other supplies. Tim holds out a hand, beckoning him out.

“C’mon, we gotta go,” he says. “The sun’s dropping.”

He’s moving faster now, better at handling the rope. He still takes Tim’s offered hand when he reaches the edge, jumping down to safety. He winces when he lands; Tim automatically looks for signs of injury, but then he sees Person’s shoes. They’re soaked through.

They pile the bodies on the west side of the truck. The seven from the back of the truck have shoes as dirty as Person’s, but the driver’s boots are spotless and look about Person’s size. Tim pulls them off.

“Good to go,” Person says into the radio, shaking it when it crackles. Tim holds the boots out, and Person takes them with his free hand, looking startled and grateful. “East of the truck is clear,” he says to Pappy and then looks up at Tim, managing half a smile. “Thanks,” he says, clipping the radio to his belt and sitting down.

The pickup’s already packed full. With Roz on Gina’s lap and Person volunteering to ride in the back with the supplies, there’s just enough room for the gas and water. Mambo squeezes in with Person, and he opens the back window so the dog can put her head out.

 

*

 

Even with the pickup to push the smaller obstacles out of the way, it’s slow going. The sun starts to set before they’re out of the city, and they end up parking on the roof of another parking garage, letting the moon light their watch.

The backseat of the cab folds down, so they unload some of the supplies and make up a bed for Gina and the girls. Person volunteers to take first watch, so the rest of them flip a quarter for spots in the front seats. Poke and Pappy win. Chaffin helps Tim spread out blankets between the pickup and the wall.

Person’s by the opposite wall, where he’s got a view of the garage entrance and the ramp leading up onto the roof. Mambo stirs next to him as Tim approaches, but settles again when Person runs a hand over her back. He doesn’t look up.

“I need to change her bandage in the morning,” Tim says as he sits down next to them. Person takes the water bottle Tim offers, giving him a nod in thanks. He cracks it open and drinks, squinting into the dark. “Anything moving?”

Person’s eyes sweep the street. “Nothing I can see.” He shrugs, ruffling Mambo’s ears without looking down.

Tim shifts closer, waiting for Person to look at him. When he doesn’t, Tim says, “Hey, you good?”

“You checking up on me, Doc?” Person asks, sounding amused.

“You need checking up on?” He watches Person’s shoulders tense and relax. “Are you sleeping, Person?”

Person finally cuts him a glance, eyes dark. “Are you?” he returns.

Tim hasn’t been, not really, but that didn’t start when the apocalypse did, and this isn’t about him.

“I’ll sleep when we’re out of the city,” Person says decisively, like it’s that easy to just flip that switch. Maybe it is, for him.

Mambo gets up, circles them both, and lays back down between them, flopping so her head is by Person’s knee. Person looks down at her, reaching out to rub her belly. The dog’s tail wags, thumping against Tim’s arm. He starts petting her automatically. When he looks back up, Person’s eyes are back on the street.

“I’ll sleep better, anyway,” he says under his breath.

From the set of his jaw, Tim guesses that’s the best he’s going to get tonight. He picks the bottle up from where Person set it down and holds it out until Person takes it.

“Four hours,” Tim says, hoping Person understands that he’ll be taking over watch whether Person likes it or not. Person makes a face but opens the water bottle, waiting until Tim turns away to start drinking.

 

*

 

Combined, the two of them probably get a few hours’ worth of sleep. Tim dozes off a few times but can’t stay asleep. After his shift, when Poke takes over for the last couple hours, Tim lays awake and listens to Person’s breathing finally even out.

They get an early start, and they hit the city limits an hour later. The destruction’s not as bad in the suburbs, and they make better time. They cross a stretch of highway, half-full of cars but surrounded by nothing but grass. Person’s driving, and he slows to a stop on the shoulder just before the next exit.

Tim’s riding in the back with Mambo, and he turns as much as he can, craning his neck to look at the front. Person’s looking at Poke, and Poke’s looking back at him.

“Your call,” Person says, like they’re in the middle of a conversation, even though no one’s spoken for miles.

Poke reaches into the backseat, and Gina takes his hand.

“We need to go south,” she says. “We can’t ask you to go out of your way.”

Chaffin asks, “What’s south?” but Tim already knows.

“Family, dawg,” Poke says quietly. “We gotta --”

Tim doesn’t doubt that they’ve all thought about it, about how the lack of help arriving means it must be like this outside of Oceanside, outside of California. They’re sure as hell thinking about it right now.

“We gotta go home,” Poke finishes, letting go of Gina’s hand to touch Lizzie’s hair where she’s asleep in her mother’s lap.

They’re all quiet, watching Poke. It’s Gina who speaks first. “We’ll find a car,” she says, waiting until Poke meets her eyes. “We’ll find a car and head south.”

“It’s not that long a drive,” Person offers weakly, a last attempt at an argument.

“In this traffic?” Poke says, a half-hearted joke that cuts the tension a little.

 

*

 

They find a row of SUVs in a used car lot just off the exit. Poke and Gina pick a green Explorer, and Chaffin breaks into the building to get the keys.

There isn’t much time for goodbyes, not by the time they load half the supplies into the back of the Explorer and fill up the gas tank. They hug one by one, and the girls start to cry, too young to really understand what’s happening. Tim hugs Gina and kisses her cheek. She gives him a watery smile, bringing Roz and Lizzie closer to hug him, too.

“Come say bye to Mambo,” she says when they’re done, taking the girls over to the dog.

“Be careful,” Person says to Poke, the two of them hugging tightly. Poke steps back, scrubbing at his face and blinking fast.

“You too,” he says. “You watch yourself.”

 

*

 

It’s quiet in the pickup, after. Tim can see Person’s eyes flicking up to the rearview mirror, where the Esperas are heading back west to take the exit toward Escondido. Mambo noses Tim’s hand until he starts to pet her.

They stop when the shadows start growing long. There’s a Wal-Mart with half-empty shelves on the south side of the first city they find, and signs of people being there recently. Nothing moves but dirt as they look for a place to bed down. Chaffin spots a house on a half-acre lot that looks abandoned, the garage standing open.

There are bodies inside, though. Six in the living room, maybe more in the rest of the house. Flies buzz in the fading light. Every house on the block is like that, no indication that anyone lived past that first day after the deaths started.

It’s getting dark, and eventually they settle for a mechanic’s shop with a garage they can back the pickup into. There’s no one inside the office, just a checkout stand, a little room full of spare parts, and a rec room with a foosball table and a couch that folds out.

They give Person half the couch, since he spent all day navigating around cars on the highway, and Tim wins the coin flip for the other half.

“Should we tell them they gave the best digs to the two insomniacs?” Person asks quietly as they pull the bed out. It’s a joke, but he looks almost guilty, looking down the hall to where Chaffin’s setting up a nest of blankets and Pappy’s getting ready to take first watch.

“They’ll get the good spot tomorrow night,” Tim says, toeing off his shoes. Person rolls his shoulders, stretching. He looks down the hall again. Tim reaches out and gives him a push toward his side of the bed. “Besides, we’re out of the city. You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight, remember?”

Person lets his momentum carry him down onto the mattress. He rolls over to look up at Tim, giving him a wink. “As long as you don’t steal the covers, Doc.”

It’s easier to see what’s behind the bravado, now, and so Tim lets it go. “Just kick me if I start to snore,” he says. Person grins at him, approving, like walking in circles around what they really mean is something to be proud of. Tim feels a little better, somehow, rolling his eyes at Person and pulling the sheet back. “There’s something wrong with you,” he says, but there’s no heat behind it. There _is_ something wrong with Person, but it’s nothing so different from what’s wrong with the rest of them.

 

*

 

The dog wakes Tim up in the morning, licking his foot where it’s hanging off the bed. He shakes Person awake and goes to check on Pappy and Chaffin. They’re both sitting on the window ledge, Chaffin looking out the blinds and Pappy alternating spoonfuls of beans and sips of water. Pappy gives him a nod that Tim returns and dumps the rest of the can out on the plastic mat at his feet, whistling for Mambo.

“Person up?” Chaffin asks, taking the water bottle when Pappy offers it.

“Yeah, should be,” Tim says. “Are we getting an early start?”

Pappy and Chaffin exchange glances, and then Pappy nods to a stack of maps.

“We ought to map out some routes first,” he says, drawl thicker than usual. “Figure out where we’re all going.”

“Who’s going?” Person asks from the doorway around a mouthful of instant coffee crystals.

 

*

 

Chaffin’s grandparents live in Tucson, and Pappy has a sister and two nephews in Houston. Person traces a finger along the map.

“You’ll head southeast after Phoenix,” he says. He taps the middle of the map. “My family’s in Missouri.”

“All of them?” Pappy asks.

“Down through second cousins, at least. I’m the only one who’s left in years.”

“Doc?” Pappy’s looking at him, waiting. Tim looks at the map, where the red lines split after Phoenix.

“Out east,” he says. He clears his throat and looks up at Pappy and Chaffin. “Philly, mostly.”

 

*

 

It takes two more days to get to Phoenix. Tim drives most of the first day, and Person rides shotgun with Mambo in his lap, helping Tim maneuver through a maze of cars. They see a few cars moving in the distance, but they haven’t seen another living person since they left Oceanside.

They spend the night in the break room of a Starbucks. There’s no couch, so they push the table and chairs against the wall and bed down on the floor. Person takes first watch, and Tim wakes up when he comes in to switch out with Chaffin.

“Go to sleep,” Person whispers when he sees Tim watching him lie down.

Tim listens to the click of Mambo’s nails on the floor. He stares up at the ceiling. The sky in Iraq was always startling at night, stars brighter and clearer than they were back home. He hasn’t even thought to look, but it must be like that here now, without all the light pollution.

“Close your fucking eyes, at least,” Person adds, a little louder. Tim does, listening as Person’s breathing evens out.

 

*

 

“Do you think it’s like this everywhere?”

The on-ramp to I-17 was so full of cars that they ended up driving the Jeep in the ditch for a couple miles before they reached a clearer stretch of road. Tim’s not sure they’ll make it to Flagstaff before nightfall like he’d hoped, but it’s not like they’ve got a deadline. He just hopes Pappy and Chaffin have better luck heading south.

“Probably,” he says. “Someone would have sent help if it were just here.”

“Yeah,” Person agrees. He rubs at his eyes, veering around a car stopped in the right lane, all its doors hanging open. “You think -- what do you think happens next?”

Tim’s tired, and tired of thinking about it. “Just fucking _drive_ , Person,” he snaps.

Person nods, hands back at ten and two. The sun’s in his eyes, not high enough yet for the visor to make any difference.

They’re both quiet for a long time, until Person starts to hum something, pulling off onto an exit so they can get something to eat out of the back. He’s singing “Seven Seas of Rhye” when they pull back onto the highway, and Tim joins in on the parts he remembers, tapping out a rhythm on the arm rest.

They do make it to Flagstaff, and they cross the border into New Mexico late the next afternoon. They stop at the visitor center and empty one of the vending machines of water bottles and Gatorade. Tim takes a postcard from the gift shop, sunny cacti and “wish you were here!” in bright pink letters. It’s stupid, so cheerful it makes Tim think about punching something, but Person laughs when he sees it and clips it to the passenger side visor.

“Who the hell would want to come here?” he asks, reaching into the backseat to scratch Mambo’s ears. He turns around in time to see buzzards scatter from a skeleton by the side of the road. He looks away, past Tim toward the empty median. “This place is a shithole! God damn New Mexicans can’t even keep their highways clean.”

Tim exiles him to the backseat for a nap, and he bitches about it right up until he closes his eyes and passes out. Mambo steals his seat in front.

They’re eighty miles outside Albuquerque when they stop for the night. The town’s mostly houses and a main street full of tiny shops. They fill up at the lone gas station and park in one of the car wash stalls, pulling the doors part way down to create some cover. The gaps let in the cooling night air, but Tim’s afraid they might get locked in if they shut the doors.

They sleep in the Jeep to stay warm. The back seat folds forward, and there’s just enough space for them if they both sleep on their sides. Tim gets up once to let Mambo out, and when he comes back, Person’s moved into the space Tim left. He rolls his eyes and climbs in behind him, nudging him forward until he can squeeze in.

 

*

 

It rains in the morning. Without the sun, Tim has no idea what time it is, but he knows they’re getting a late start. They break into the gas station anyway. Person tosses him a Twinkie from across the store, and Tim grabs two pairs of sunglasses off a rack by the registers. They find some gas cans and fill up two, loading them into the back of the Jeep.

Mambo barks once, twice, and they watch a semi go by on the highway. Nothing else moves.

Tim hands Person a water bottle and a pair of sunglasses when they get in the car.

“I don’t know what happens next,” he blurts out, right as Person turns the key in the ignition.

Person looks out toward the highway, pushing the sunglasses up his nose. “No, you were right,” he says. He looks over at Tim and gives a little shrug. “We drive.”

 

*


End file.
